Star Jumping Over New Zealand Week Two.

Sunday 22nd

We finally arrived in Fox glacier after a day and a half of driving. The weather for the second full day of driving was absolutely atrocious. It did nothing but rain all day with low cloud, so we couldn’t see much scenery on our travels. There were plenty of impressive lakes and mountain edge driving though. We weren’t very optimistic for the Fox Glacier trip on Monday. I noticed that they run ice climbing day sessions at the glacier along with a tour, so I talked Steve into having a go, instead of just doing a boring day trip walking over the glacier.

We were very lucky again and the weather for Sunday was fantastic, such a contrast to the day before. So far when we’ve been travelling the weather has been bad and when we’ve been doing activities the weather has been sunny. Here you can see the intrepid adventurers part way though our climb to get to Fox Glacier. As well as Steve and myself there were two other plucky climbers, Stephanie and Adam, as well as our two guides Mike and Troy. You can see Mike on the left.

This is the head of the glacier. It was very impressive and one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world at about a metre a day at the bottom and up to ten metres a day at the top. It is 13,000 metres in length and contains roughly 25 billion litres of ice!

The strange thing was that around the glacier is tropical rainforest and bare rock. It felt very surreal to be on a giant lump of ice while surrounded by forest and mountains.


This is the view up the glacier from one of our climbing positions. It really looked like polystyrene foam or icing sugar to me, such a strange tint of blue all over the ice.

Can you guess who this is?

Any more of an idea? The persons back is very wet because at the bottom of the crevasse it is only just wide enough for the knees and back.

Yes, it’s only me, smiling and happy as usual when doing something dangerous. I really enjoyed the climbing, my last six months working out with Quentin really paid dividends, as my arms were well up to the task of pulling my body weight up. We did seven different climbs over the day and some of the more than once.

This is a photo of one of our last climbs. You can see Steve climbing up from a crevasse that we were initially lowered down to first. I’m at the top obviously doing some press-ups, as the climbing wasn’t enough to tire me out. :-)

Each time one of us was lowered down into the crevasse we wanted to be lowered a little bit further. I almost managed to get down to the bottom where there was some melted water, but I couldn't get any further down at because the gap near the bottom was too narrow. Less pies next time I think.



This is another picture of Mike who is looking rather cool for the camera while Steve is struggling to pull himself up at his feet.


Monday 24th

We drove from Fox Glacier to Picton on Monday. It’s around a six-hour drive for us so quite long, but the scenery was as stunning as ever. Unfortunately for me I was caught speeding along a very straight road. It was as straight as I could see, but I didn’t see the police car hidden in a ditch on the left of the road with a policeman measuring my speed. I was caught doing 116 kmph, when the speed limit along the road was 100 kmph. By the way that the police man was talking both Steve and I thought that he was going to let us off seeing as we were tourists and not going massively over the limit. However he did give me a ticket, fortunately it was only for $120 (£40). I have paid it off at a local Westpac bank and am annoyed about it but I was over the speed limit and at least the fine was only a small amount.

We stayed overnight at Picton, which really is a dead town with only the main ferry terminal to Wellington in the north island of any note. Our motel room was really horrible with grotty furnishings and bedding. The toilet was more like an out house with a window which wouldn’t close as well as ants in the kitchen. Well at least it was cheap at only £15pp and only for one night.

We caught the 10am ferry to Wellington the following morning, it was still raining and a little windy. The ferry trip turned out to be quite an adventure as it was really blowing a gale in the Cook Strait and there were four metre waves! This meant that the ferry which was quite large, was moving up and down like a roller coaster for over three hours, as the captain could only do ten knots in the rough seas. The usual three-hour crossing took four and a half hours.

Plenty of people were sick on the ferry as well. I felt a little queasy after a couple of hours, but closing my eyes and trying to sleep managed to get me through the trip. Steve was ok throughout the journey and took some cool video clips of the sea. He said that walking to the back end of the boat looked like a warship with people laying down over all the floors and being sick. Most of the sick people went there as it was meant to be less rough there than the front where we were. He also said that the men's toilet was a real mess of sick and one poor bloke lying on the floor being very ill.

The ferry people were saying that they only just decided to sail that morning and the ferries later on were cancelled. Wellington airport was also closed for the day due to string winds. We got off lightly though as the last ferry after ours took ten hours to cross!

We finally arrived at Whakapapa village late in the evening. After the Picton motel we decided to treat ourselves to a top hotel and booked ourselves in at the Grand Chateau Hotel for two nights. A five star hotel for only £30 a night pp, what a bargain.

Hopefully the weather would be better tomorrow four our day long walk along the Tongarrio Crossing in the Tongarrio National Park. It’s where Mount Doom was filmed for Lord of the Rings. The concierge said that he thought that there was a metre of snow along the walk though which doesn’t sound good.

Wednesday 25th

Unfortunately the guide at the tourist office didn’t recommend that we try the Tongarrio Crossing today as there was significant snowfall last night and the weather was going to be unpredictable today. Instead we were told that the Tama Lakes walk would be just as good and last around 4-5 hours as well.

This is about a quarter of the way around the walk at the Taranaki Falls. It was quite impressive as you can walk right up to where the water hits the stream if you want to get a little wet. This is about as far as I could get before getting significant spray from the water.


Here is the view of Mt Ruapehu which we had all along our walk and would be steadily heading towards all day.

Near the end of the walk we had a steep walk up the side of the mountain to get to see the edges of the craters. There were steep drops either side of the narrow path. Steve slipped a couple of times, but he was never really close to falling down the sides.

The wind was also blowing quite hard up here and you could almost lean into it and stay upright. My windbreaker was definitely very useful and was worth its weight in gold.




More views of the path along the ridgeline of the lakes. The lakes were created as a result of old explosion craters on the Tama Saddle between Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe mountains.














Me with my star jump on the top of the ridge.











Thursday 26th

This is a view of the hotel main ground floor parlour room. It was very stylish and a great place to just sit down and have a beer or play a few frames of snooker. It was built in the style of an English stately home and originally opened in 1929. The food was very tasty there too with some of the best room service that I've ever had.

There was enough snow left to do some snowboarding as well! We only found this out after chatting to some of the other hotel guests. I was gutted that I could have bought my snowboarding kit along and had some more fun on the slopes.

We left the lovely hotel early to head towards the Waitomo Caves because we were running out of holiday time so only had a few hours there before we wanted to get to Auckland and spend at least one day there.

The two-hour cave tour that we did was very impressive. Fortunately we only had a small tour group with five of us in all. Here is a view of some of the sea deposits that forms the stalactites and stalagmites.

If you’ve ever seen the horror film The Descent then you’ll appreciate how scary it could be to be down the caves in some cramp conditions. The tour route was very sparsely lit so you could barely find your way around the place. It was amazing to notice the difference in atmosphere inside the cave from the outside. There was a definite earthy smell in the caves and various sections of the caves were sealed off with automated airlock style doors. Very cool!

This is one of the smaller paths leading off the main path. One of the most famous things about the caves is the Glowworms. You have to see them in pitch blackness to really appreciate them. They look like very small and bright neon lights glowing in the cave walls. You can just see a few of them in the darkness of this image. The bright lights are used to attract insects to them which the glowworms can catch in sticky web lines try drop down from their bodies.

Here are some stranger stalagmite formations. They almost look like H.R. Geiger images, very creepy. I would have loved to have the time to go abseiling and black water rafting along these caves. Even better would be to go pot holing in the caves and have a chance to explore new areas of the caves. They are still finding new caverns to this day.









Friday 27th

For our final day and a half we went to Auckland to explore some city life in New Zealand. The South Island really is underpopulated and a bit too sparse for my liking. The North Island has more people but most of them live in Auckland.

I went to the Main and New Auckland Art galleries as part of my final day. The art was surprisingly good for such a small collection, almost as good as the collections that I've seen in Sydney.

We also went up to the top of the Sky Tower. It's very similar to the Sydney tower but a little bit taller, just to beat the Australians I bet. There were some great views around the city and we went up there just around sunset for a few beers and to reflect on our holiday here. Auckland is like Sydney but everything is a little bit smaller. It even has a harbour bridge which doesn't look a patch on Sydney's coat hanger.

I've had a really great time over the past two weeks and would love to repeat the skydiving and take up some climbing as well. I will probably get a chance to have a go at both activities in my remaining time in Australia.